


but i'm not a category (so please stop your asking)

by gatortrainer



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gender Issues, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatortrainer/pseuds/gatortrainer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruth Rogers is six years old when she tells her mom that she doesn’t want to wear dresses anymore.</p><p>(Very minor Steve/Bucky)</p>
            </blockquote>





	but i'm not a category (so please stop your asking)

Ruth Rogers is six years old when she tells her mom that she doesn’t want to wear dresses anymore. They make her feel silly, she says. Her mom tells her that she has to wear them until they’re worn out, but then they’ll find something else for her. And that’s okay with Ruth. She puts up with wearing dresses that make her feel sick for a few more months, but then they buy her shirts and pants, and she is okay.

-

She gets in a fight within hours at the orphanage. A kid two heads taller than her was picking on another girl, and Ruth wasn’t about to let that happen. Ruth then got her ass kicked into the ground. The boy told her she looked ugly in ‘boy clothes’, and Ruth feels a funny weight settle in her heart, and she is crying before she can help herself.

A boy who looks to be her age runs over and scares them off by giving the boy a shiner. He turns to Ruth and introduces himself as Bucky, and offers to help clean her up.

Ruth decides that she wanted to be just like Bucky. In every way.

-  
Ruth is 11 when she’s sitting under a tree sketching on some scrap paper. She hears gunshots nearby and, around her own scream, hears a man yelling about how that’s what he gets for being a “fucking queer”. She’s quickly ushered inside the orphanage by Sister Ethel before she can go see the commotion.

When she asks Bucky what that ‘queer’ means later, Bucky shrugs.

“Those queers like people that are like them,” he explains, voice low. “Some of them think they’re not their gender, too, I guess, like I’d be a girl and you’d be a boy. Most people think that’s not right, so they get special bars and prison and stuff.”

“Do you think it’s okay?” Ruth asks, and Bucky shrugs again, so she drops it.

This day led to sleepless nights as she mulled over the person being killed, what Bucky said, and if it could relate to her.

For the first time since Ma died, Ruth takes up praying.

-

When she’s 13, it’s late at night and she’s crying in the bathroom. She hates everything about herself. Everything about her feels wrong, like a lie. This isn’t her. This isn’t who she’s born to be.

She takes a pair of scissors and cuts her hair as short as she can, her blonde braid falling to the floor.

Sister Rosemary has to call for Ruth’s bi-annual haircut three months early (Ruth gets grounded and is on kitchen duty for the next month), and with her hair just about as short as it can be cut, she doesn’t stop smiling the rest of the day.

-

When she’s 14, her voice gets higher and her body thins out. She doesn’t have an awful lot of curves, but it’s enough to make her sick. She wants Bucky’s width, muscles, and brawn. She wants his same dip in his chin, the same couple of stray chin hairs, his voice.

Ruth starts to practice speaking with a lower voice. She knows it sounds awful due to the looks she gets (Bucky asks her once if she’s getting sick – if it’s “an asthma thing or sumthin’”, and she says that it’s how she’s always sounded. He doesn’t buy it for a second, but doesn’t ask again). She keeps at it until she’s speaking in a low voice without thinking. It’s not perfect, but when she goes to the general store dressed in slacks to buy a hard caramel and the owner calls her ‘sonny’, she feels a strange sense of relief.

-

When she’s 18, she and Bucky are living in the smallest, dirtiest apartment the world has ever seen. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and Bucky has smuggled a bottle of whisky. It’s not right to steal, but he convinced her that it was fine because it was just the one night.

They’re drunk and sitting on the small bed, and she tells him that she wishes she could be a guy like him.

“Ruth?” He asks, eyes darkening and jaw set. “You’re not one of those trannies, are you?”

She begins to cry as she so often does, and though Bucky keeps his body tense for a few moments longer, he hesitantly and stiffly pulls her close. When he releases, he plasters on a fake grin and gently hits her arm.

“That’s a good thing if you are. It’s always wanted a brother," he tries to joke, and she shakes her head, trembling.

“I’ve prayed, Buck,” she sobs, voice cracking. “I don’t wanna die!”

“You? Die?” Bucky forces out a bitter laugh. “If your million illnesses and zillion fights haven’t gotten you by now, you’re immortal. ‘Sides, whoever wants to get to you has to get through me.”

He takes a long swig of the whiskey before passing the bottle to her, suggests waiting for fireworks by the window, and the subject is dropped.

-  
At first, the change is only at home. Ruth tells Bucky to treat him like a boy. He changes his name to Steven Grant, and the name sounds weird and twisted in both of their mouths. He wears Bucky’s old hand-me-downs, which are too big and hang off his body and few curves in awkward ways. Steve feels better in the way that he finally feels ok with himself as a person, but his body is still sick and disgusting. Bucky suggests hemming his old clothes to fit Steve, but Steve welcomes the bagging to cover up himself.

When Bucky comes home from work one day and silently hands Steve a large suit coat and necktie, Steve almost kisses him out of pure joy. Under the coat, no curves are detectable, and they go out to the movies and waste the last of Bucky’s paycheck on popcorn and tickets to the evening picture.

-

To some people, Steve can pass off as… Steve. So Bucky sets him up with girl after girl, telling Steve time and time again that a good girl’s just gonna care about what’s on the inside, while both of them ignore the subject of the thousands of queers that get killed each week.

Many people pass him with questioning looks, trying to decide if he’s a very feminine, small man, a manly girl, or something else entirely.

When Steve goes out alone one day and notices he’s being followed, he tries to ignore it, walking a little faster towards home. When he’s shoved into an alleyway, has his pants forced down, and is spit on while having a stranger tell him that he’s going to kill him, all Steve can do is smack the man’s head with the lid of a trash can. He roughly pulled his pants up and runs the rest of the way home, double bolting the door behind him and having what seemed like the longest asthma attack of his life.

-

He rarely goes out alone after that.

Steve does go out with Bucky, though. They’re at the bar when they run into some gals from their orphanage days. They’re flocked around Bucky, occasionally laughing and gently tapping his shoulder, when one of them points at Steve and squawks,

“No way! Is that Ruthless Ruth?”

Rather than talking to Steve, they turn to Bucky again.

“Why does she look like that? Is she a,” the girl drops her voice into a hiss, “ _dyke_? You’re too good to be hanging with a dyke, Bucky!”

Steve tenses and color drains form his face, while Bucky’s eyes widen before breaking into an easy grin.

“Her? Jesus, no. If Ruth was a dyke, I’d have her gone in no time. She’s just a dumb ol’ girl playing dress up,” he laughed, winning the giggles from the girls around him. The words cut like a dagger through Steve, so he gets up and marches home, hoping for once that he will be killed before he gets there.

Bucky comes through the door that night reeking of cheap booze and perfume. Steve’s sitting on the couch in a dress, his sharp fingernails digging holes into his thigh.

“The hell’re you wearin’?” Bucky asks, doing a double take before flopping on the couch next to him.

“Just a dumb girl playing dress up, right?” Steve snarls. “I should cut this whole fucking act and be the girl you want me to be.”

“Now, wait a minute-“

“Don’t deny it, ‘cause you know you’d rather be able to go out with someone normal,” Steve snaps, and Bucky shakes his head.

“I jus’ said that ‘cause the girls were there,” Bucky slurs, and Steve stands up, hands balled into fists.

“Well, was it worth it? Was a cheap blowjob in a disgusting bathroom worth it?”

“I did it for your own good,” Bucky shouts.

Steve laughs. “You’re a sick bastard, Bucky Barnes,” he spits. He swings his fist at Bucky’s jaw, and Bucky blocks it with relative ease. They could practically hear the neighbors pressing their ears to their walls, so Bucky grabs Steve’s arm and yanks him back onto the couch. He drops his voice to a murmur and leans in, close enough that Steve can see the tint of lipstick on Bucky’s lips and smell every glass of scotch.

“If those girls- if anyone knew who you were, Steve, you’d be shit outta luck. Hell, we both would be. If I didn’t hafta say it when the girls were there, I never would’ve, ‘cause I didn’t believe a word of what I said then, alright? Now go get your slacks on like the man you are and stop fussin’.”

The silence in the room is thick enough to slice a knife through, and Steve gets up and pulls on pants.

-

Steve starts enlisting in the military. Each time he comes home, Bucky yells about him about how easy it’d be for them to ask Steve to strip down and then everything would be blown, but Steve keeps trying. He decides if he’s going to be killed, he wants the war to do its worst on him before some bully can.

When Bucky’s accepted in, they spend the night before his departure sitting on their small bed and drinking, as they’ve done so many times before.

They’re looking out the window, watching the city crowd tin down as the night goes on, when Bucky leans over and gently kisses Steve. It’s nothing passionate or sloppy or sexual, just a peck saying everything they’ve ever wanted to say. Bucky sits back up, looks into Steve’s eyes, and says, “You’re the greatest man I’ve ever known.”

When Bucky’s gone the next day, Steve remembers this and feels his heart hollow.

-

He’s stripped down at a physical. Steve’s holding his breath the entire time, thinking about how this will be the end and he never even made it to a battlefield. Dr. Erskine looks over Steve’s body without a comment, finishes the examination, and gives Steve a smile.

“Yes,” he says, accent thick and eyes kind, “you’ll do perfect.”

-

He’s running at a camp, a good ten feet behind the rest of the group. He tries hard to keep himself covered and lay low, and nobody looks at him twice. The times that he is beaten up is because of his own damn mouth rather than who he is.

He gets his period two weeks after ending up at camp, and ends up in Agent Carter’s tent, cursing himself for forgetting any rags. He awkwardly lingers in the doorway, she motions him inside, he sits.

“Steve,” she greets, soft smile playing at her mouth, and his hands tremble.

“I’m technically female,” he says. Her smile falls, but she nods and gestures towards a case in the corner.

“You’ll find rags in there. Help yourself.”

“You’re not mad?”

She turns to him, lips pursed. “Steve, we’re on a battlefield. Our countries are at war. Not to mention that I, of all people, know how hard it can be to be a woman out here. The least of my worries is who you are. Now take some rags before you bleed through your clothes.”

It’s a tough world to survive in out there, but Steve has found people that make it worth trying.

-

“Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.”

-  
Both Stark and Erskine look at Steve with huge smiles. Stark keeps repeating, “Oh, just you wait!”

Scientists are focused on their work. Stark and Erskine surround Steve while they strap him in, effectively hiding the view of his body until he’s nestled in the pod.

The pain surges through every part of Steve as the serum rushes through him. He can feel him becoming bigger and taller than even Bucky, and he wants to cry with joy. When he’s out of the pod, Peggy touches his chest lightly, and that’s when he notices that his chest has been replaced with pecs.

And when he showers that night, that’s when he sees that every part of him has been replaced with exactly who he’s always wanted to be. Every part.

-

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky says, looking up and down every part of Steve’s body. Steve helps Bucky out of the room. “What happened to you?” He knows that there’s so much Bucky wants to ask, but Steve knows that they’re being watched. So, he gives an easy grin, and says,

“I joined the Army.”

-

In the 21st century, Steve slowly comes out to the team about who he used to be. He brings Ruth Rogers to light to those close to him, and the team is supportive. He doesn’t tell anyone else – he decides it’s nobody else’s damn business. He joins panels, speaks out, and does endless press conferences on helping transgender youth. Whenever he’s asked why he feels so passionately, he just smiles and says that that he used to know someone. Nobody pushes it.  
-

When Steve wakes up every morning, he stumbles to the bathroom. He looks in the mirror, runs his hand over his stubble, and decides that he needs to shave. Sometimes he sees the poor weak Ruth looking back at him, but he’s learning to push past that and see the strong man instead.

When Steve wakes up every morning, he’s happy.


End file.
